Five Vices That Need Celebrity Endorsements

Ed. Note: Rocks Off does not advocate trying any of the products mentioned in this article (even if they exist) or, really, following any of Jef With One F's advice about anything at all.

When Marilyn Manson put out Mansinthe, that was cute. Then David Lynch put out his own brand of coffee, and anyone who has seen a Lynch film will tell you that nothing makes more sense than him putting out his own coffee.

However, Pink Floyd wine? Rolling Stones wine? This trend needs to be stopped as soon as possible.

Wine is Rocks Off's drink of choice, and not in a good way. Our gig bag contains two changes of clothes, a notebook for song ideas, a copy of Michael Shilling's Rock Bottom, a couple of spare mike cables, and usually two of those four-packs of Gallo Merlot that you see on sale for $4.

For those who haven't tried it, it's wine for people who are going to die on a very dirty mattress. We point this out to show that it's not that we think wine is too upper-crust for rock and roll, far from it. It's that we don't feel artists are attaching their names to the vices that more accurately tie into their existence. In that spirit, we humbly present the following five suggestions.

RAMONES AIRPLANE GLUE

One of the best tracks of the Ramone's self-titled 1976 debut is "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue," and they are certainly not alone in singing about the inhalant fad of the 1970s and '80s. The Dead Milkmen and Beastie Boys have also mentioned huffing the fumes from model airplane glue, and there was even an influential punk zine called Sniffin' Glue.

Dee Dee Ramone insisted in many interviews that he hadn't sniffed glue since trying it a few times at age eight, but Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me has some pretty convincing words with Dee Dee over glue use by both Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, who apparently stuck to glue because other drugs either made him sick or freak out.

Regardless, many brands of model airplane glue still contain a wonderful assortment of hazardous chemicals that will result in highs and brain damage - mostly brain damage, so why not tie on the Ramones' name to one of them?

KE(DOLLAR SIGN)HA CLEAR WHISKEY

Whiskey normally has a pleasant woody brown color to it, but it only gets that way from the wood of the barrels it ages in. Last year, Death's Door White Whisky started production under the helm of Brian Ellison, and the result is a clear whiskey that is aged for no more than 72 hours. It's a new and exciting kind of blend, clear as water and adding a unique flavor to traditional whiskey-based cocktails like Manhattans.

We think this product could do well with an endorsement from Ke(dollar sign)ha, who has in the past expressed her love of carrying around water bottles full of whisky. By utilizing White Whisky, the cops wouldn't know you were actually drinking until you started kissing them and then threatened to kick their ass for judging you with their eyes.

VIOLENT J COLD MEDICINE

Violent J of Insane Clown Posse has mentioned his love of using NyQuil as a sleep aid in several songs, so it only stands to reason that J could be the Wilford Brimley of cold and cough medicine. NyQuil is chock-full of alcohol, which is why when we take it we basically feel like we've been doing shots.

Essentially, you have been. On the other hand, most of the cold medicines also contain acetaminophen, the same fever reducer found in Tylenol. Combing the two can wreak severe damage on the liver, which is why following the dosage recommendations is very, very important.

In moderation, though, when you need to hit the hay and want a few triptastic dreams to go with it? Yeah, were with J on this one. Fucking miracle.

LADY GAGA FISH HEADS

We know Lady Gaga likes meat, and is also completely bonkers. Luckily, there is a perfectly legal way to indulge both of those things. Meet the Salpa Sarpa, a Mediterranean fish whose body is delicious and whose head can make one trip balls.

Apparently a compound called inole, present in its preferred diet of algae, can accumulate in its head. If you eat one of these inole-laden heads, you will basically spend the next 48 hours seeing visions of the devil.

That's not just us exaggerating, by the way. A 2006 report in Clinical Toxicology stated that Ancient Romans were well aware of the fish head hallucinogen, which would certainly explain much of their mythology... and about half of Caligula.

Being that watching any Lady Gaga performance already involves unearthly howls and rivers of blood, what's the worse that could happen from downing magic fish heads bearing her seal of approval?

LEONARD COHEN WINE

If we're going to buy any brand of wine with a celebrity singer's endorsement, then the one we want comes from Leonard Cohen. No man combines the debauched and the romantic so well in his lyrics as does the Canadian superstar.

Whether you're one of those people who drinks alone in the dark, or is using a little vino in conjunction with some of Cohen's music to tumble some satin-red starlet into your silk sheets, we're pretty sure whatever blend he was hawking would suit the mood perfectly.

Wine would be something that you could trust Cohen on, as he used to consume about four bottles of a day, and we're not the only ones to think Cohen deserves his own red. Simon from Drinking Outside the Box even has the perfect one picked out:

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It's from Corsica, the Domaine Saparale 2006 Corse Sartene. It's a wine that started of shy and wispy, but which over a couple of hours has emerged to show a gentle, smoky plum and pomegranate flavour, pepped up with rather more ethereal kirsch-like fragrances. Like Leonard, its youth has passed, but its all the better for having passed into confident maturity.